The Fife and Drum of the Old Days

The following quote is taken from Drum Taps in Dixie: Memories of a Drummer Boy, 1861-1865 (published in 1905) pages 23-24.

Fife and drum have been heard in every camp and upon all of the battlefields of the world. And for a marching column there is nothing like martial music of the good old-fashioned kind, such as inspired the continental heroes at Lexington, Yorktown and Bunker Hill, and rallied the boys of '61, and later led them in all the marches through the South.

Martial music seems to have gone out of fashion in these up-to-date days, and what little there is, is but a poor apology, with the bugle blasts interjected between the rub-a-dub-dubs of the drummers who hardly know their a b c's about snare drumming.

I have heard but one good drum corps since the war, and that was at the G. A. R. gathering at Buffalo a few years ago. An old time drum corps, who styled themselves the "Continentals" were present. It was composed of veterans over 70 years of age, and, say, they could double discount any other organization present.

Many of the crack brass bands of the country were there, but they were not in it with the old martial band. Their music—mind the expression, "music"—caught on with all the swell people of the city who thronged the camp waiting for an opportunity to hear them, and the veterans went wild as they heard again the reveille and tattoo and the old familiar strains of "Yankee Doodle," "The Girl I Left Behind Me," "Rory O'More," "The Campbells Are Coming," "Hail to the Chief," and many other reminders of the old days.